It should come as no surprise that the more a food is processed the worse it is for your health and with the massive amounts of processed foods at our disposal, avoiding them is becoming harder.
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The greasier, the more lethal
But that should not prevent you from looking at replacing junk food with a healthier variety of nutrition to keep you at your best. In a very concerning study that was recently conducted by researchers from the University of Michigan, hot dogs were found to take off 36 minutes of someone's life every single time it was consumed.
The study in question looked at around 5,000 different types of food to evaluate how much time they would add or subtract from a person's life. Unsurprisingly so, popular greasy foods such as bacon, burgers, chicken nuggets and the like only detracted from people's health while whole foods could add as much as 80 minutes per serving to a person's life. The researchers concluded that:
Previous studies investigating healthy or sustainable diets have often reduced their findings to a discussion of plant-based versus animal-based foods, with the latter stigmatised as the least nutritious and sustainable.
And added:
Although we find that plant-based foods generally perform better, there are considerable variations within both plant-based and animal-based foods that should be acknowledged before such generalised inferences are warranted
How much processed foods do Brits eat?
According to a study carried out in 2017 by Public Health Nutrition, UK families are the largest consumers of 'ultra processed foods' in Europe.
Researchers looked at the eating habits of families across 19 European countries and found that 50.7% of British families' diets consisted of heavily processed foods. Coming second to the UK was Germany with 46.2% and then Ireland with 45.9%, compared to 14.2% in France and—the lowest—Portugal with 10.2%.
